Through a gestural practice, Julie Laenkholm investigates the natural and the artificial in order to capture the ineffable.With a feminist methodology, she uses gestures as stand-ins for the transformative process of the unconscious, investigating ways of being and creating meaning through non-performativity. Laenkholm is interested in how immediate, intentional, and automatic body movements can create meaning rather than perform or refer to something else. Laenkholm combines artificial materials like plastic bags with natural materials such as clay, natural light, and ambient sound to critically engage in our notion of language. She is interested in the physicality of the “in between” as well as extending the space of words and meaning of spoken language. “Expectations” is a key word in her practice. Laenkholm’s work often combine various elements that are precisely placed but in a seemingly arbitrary form, to create what she calls “an ineffable situation.” Gestural writings have been a large part of her recent practice, using streams of written words as material in her studio, responding to her sculptures in a restricted time frame of an hour, making what she calls “word sculptures.” In Off Pink, she has been interested in further extending the notion of the non-performative gestural practice, using movement as material. In this body of work, she is investigating movement as a way of accessing new intelligences. “This ineffable situation” will have three sculptural elements: movements as video sculpture, a clay and plastic sculpture, and a word sculpture.

Julie Laenkholm received The Klint Award from Denmark Copenhagen in 2015 for her earlier works which address human interaction using light. She is currently a scholar at The Bikuben Foundation, NY.